European hamster
Cricetus cricetus
— Where the name comes from
Cricetus latinises a Slavic word — the Czech křeček, the Polish chomik — of ancient and uncertain origin. The Italian criceto comes from it. The English hamster arrives instead from the Old High German hamustro, perhaps related to a root meaning “to hoard”: and hoarding is precisely what this animal does, in quantities no other European rodent matches.
— Facts
- Group
- Mammals · Mammalia
- Order
- Rodents
- Habitat
- Steppe, farmland with deep clay soil
- Range
- From central and western Europe to western Siberia
- Size
- 20–35 cm, 200–650 g
- Diet
- Omnivore — seeds, grain, roots, insects
- Lifespan
- 2 years in the wild, up to 8 in captivity
— Characteristics
- 01
It is far larger than pet hamsters: it weighs up to half a kilo.
- 02
It lays in stores in its burrow that can exceed fifteen kilos of seed.
- 03
Its belly is black, which is unusual: almost all mammals have a pale one.
— What sets it apart
In 2020 the IUCN classed it as “critically endangered”, the same category as the Sumatran rhinoceros, and the news surprised everyone, because until the 1980s it was an agricultural scourge exterminated by the million. The collapse has been 94% in a single generation, and the cause is not hunting: monocultures have shortened the season in which it finds food, night lighting has disturbed its rhythms, and litters have fallen from twenty to five young a year. An animal regarded as vermin has become critically threatened without anyone watching.
